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The Christian Science Monitor's free energy email digest delivers global energy's big ideas to your inbox every Saturday morning. Each issue includes a smart, quick, and thorough roundup of energy news, analysis, events, and reports from around the world, written and curated by Monitor energy reporters David J. Unger and Jared Gilmour.

A YEAR AGO TODAY, few would have predicted a collapse in oil prices would be the biggest energy story of 2014. Pinpointing next year’s equivalent is just as unlikely. Still, we can at least consider what to watch worldwide in one of the most dynamic, unpredictable, and misunderstood industries. Whatever happens in 2015, these five trends will shape the year ahead in global energy.

Oil changeThe oil crash fallout will continue worldwide throughout at least the first half of 2015. US shale production growth will slow, perhaps even pause. OPEC will feel mounting existential threats, and may eventually have to cut production. Strapped for cash, more vulnerable petro states like Nigeria and Venezuela will curtail inefficient, regressive fuel subsidies. The effect on price could go either way. “On one hand, it could bring down demand,” says Brenda Shaffer, a professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies in Washington. “But on the other hand, it might cause domestic instability, which could bring production offline.” Across the globe, nearly $1 trillion in future oil projects are at risk, according to Goldman Sachs.

Politics and power Just as the US shale boom’s economic realities hit a bump, its political prospects brighten. The rising oil-and-gas superpower’s energy policy gets a whole new look once Republicans take the reins of the US Congress in January. There will be quick action to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, expand LNG exports, peel back the oil export ban, and water down the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Not all of these efforts will succeed – President Obama still holds veto power – but the predominant tone on Capitol Hill will be a far cry from Democrats’ muted, uneasy support for the domestic oil and gas boom. That means some backsliding on climate progress, and much consternation in Moscow, Riyadh, Caracas, and other petro capitals.

Nuclear’s next generation Advanced nuclear technologies are generating a lot of buzz as a young crop of engineers and scientists find new solutions to some of nuclear’s most vexing challenges. Some of the supposed “low-waste,” “meltdown-proof” technologies will prove too good (or too expensive) to be true, but safer iterations of nuclear will look increasingly attractive as the climate challenge becomes more pressing and the limits of energy-diffuse, intermittent renewables become more apparent. Next year isn’t going to see a nuclear construction spree (unless you’re China), but there should be a lot happening in research and development. China will likely lead on that front, too: “[A]s part of installing Generation 3 [nuclear] reactors, I’m sure that China will want to licence the technology and ultimately be able to export it themselves,” notes Stephen O’Sullivan, director of emerging markets energy research for Trusted Sources, a London-based consultancy.